KEY POINTS:
Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney treated me to a filled roll last week to ensure I was fully briefed on the $800,000 "Big little City" campaign being launched today to lure punters out of the malls and into downtown Auckland. He was worried I might
bag the slogan.
As I scoffed my lunch, I didn't let on that as history goes, a thumbs down from me might have been no bad thing. After all I rubbished the Starship label for the new children's hospital when adman Bob Harvey came up with his inspiration in the early 90s and was less than enthusiastic when the city's performing arts hub was relabelled, The Edge. Both brand names survived and prospered regardless.
"Big little City" at least sounds better than "Auckland A," the stillborn slogan/logo that another adman, Saatchi's Mike Hutcheson, unveiled in 2001 as part of the revival of the Auckland Festival. That brainstorm was launched with a video labelled "The Big A", which seemed to lean heavily on New York's "Big Apple" brand. But as borrowing goes, it was a country mile behind "Big little City" which is a complete match with a dozen other city slogans, world wide.
Haven't Colenso, the advertising agency involved, heard of the Google search engine? If they had, they would have spotted the Iceland Tourist Board's campaign for "Reykjavik - Iceland's Big Little City," or noted that assorted US towns and cities - Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Austin - to say nothing of Amsterdam and Zurich, are among those that formally, or informally, pop up wearing the same tag.
And then there's Reno, Nevada, the gambling mecca, which has promoted itself the "Biggest Little City in the World" since at least 1910.
If Mayor John Banks hadn't just announced he's taking the pruning shears to the city's sister city programme, we could have held a regular shoot-out with the other Big little Cities for the right to wear the crown. Then again, I suspect Reno and Reykjavik and the others might get a little sniffy about such up-start temerity.
As my opinion on branding can be the kiss of life, I'll hold my tongue over the latest relabelling attempt. Though I do admit I loved the Wellingtonian who phoned National Radio on Friday chortling about downtown Auckland rebranding itself "a superette".
As you enter that stage of life when remembering your name each morning is a triumph - don't ask about the assorted computer passwords forgotten after three weeks holiday - the last thing you need is impulsive name-changing for the sake of it.
There was the daft carry-on a few years back when stroppy Auckland District Health Board chairman Wayne Brown plotted to rename the Starship to Auckland Sick Children's Hospital to discourage kids who he suspected were faking ill-health.
Over the past week or so, no mountain peak has been safe from those seeking something to name after Sir Edmund Hillary - to say nothing of state highways, harbours and public holidays. To me the only benefactors of such impromptu renaming are the publishers of road maps and their electronic equivalents.
More than 200 years after Captain Cook first sighted these shores we're still trying to sort out the orgy of renaming by him and the English colonists who followed.
Much of the country already had mellifluous, self-explanatory labelling. But instead of stopping to ask, the newcomers made up new ones, Aoraki becoming Mt Cook, Maungawhau, Mt Eden and so on and on.
In recent times, there's been an attempt to restore the past by hyphenating the old names with the new, with a presumption that in due course, the original Maori name will again stand alone. To interrupt this process by renaming Aoraki after Sir Edmund, is a step backwards.
On a completely lesser plane, back in the Big little City, let me pay for my lunch by inviting mall regulars downtown for a change. Regardless of its name, the footpaths are new, the nikau palms are stunning, and while the sun shines, the Queen St verandas are not leaking.
